


Love is a Verb

by Lynzee005



Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Marshmallow Fluff, Snow Day, rot your teeth, so they stay in bed and don't do anything all day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-26
Updated: 2017-08-26
Packaged: 2018-12-20 01:15:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11910162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lynzee005/pseuds/Lynzee005
Summary: Audrey plans a snow day.





	Love is a Verb

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tkg](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tkg/gifts).



> For bowserbabe

“Come back to bed,” Audrey simpered as she rolled over onto her side and pulled the thick coverlet up to her chest.

Dale groaned and peered over his shoulder at her, his toothbrush sticking out below his nose and foamy blue toothpaste collecting in the corner of his lips. “Aww-rey,” he muttered, before turning back to the sink and spitting. “I have so much paperwork to do, and if I don’t do it—”

“But it’s  _ Saturday _ ,” she said. “And it snowed like two feet overnight.”

He turned to her, face towel in hand. “It did not snow two feet, Audrey.”

“Well,” she said, drawing lazy circles on the covers with her middle finger. “At least six inches.”

Dale was so amused by her. He replaced the towel on the hook and turned off the light, plunging the room into wintry darkness. A sliver of streetlight crept in between the drapes in the window; sunrise was still two hours away. He sat on the edge of the bed, one foot on the floor. “You really haven’t grasped how to live in a snowy city, have you?”

She closed her eyes and tilted her head up, nose in the air. “Now that’s not fair, I’ve gotten a lot better since—”

But Dale didn’t let her finish. Cutting her off mid-sentence, he captured her mouth in a searing kiss and pressed her back against the pillows of their bed. She giggled against him.

“If I stay home today, I have to go in tomorrow.”

Beneath him, Audrey shrugged. “That’s future Audrey’s problem.”

Dale grinned and pulled his other leg up onto the bed, tossing the covers over them both as he snuggled down next to her.

“Let’s make a day of it,” she whispered, excited. “Let’s stay in bed  _ all day _ .”

This was almost too much. “But Audrey, we have to eat...I have to urinate…”

“Don’t be so literal!” she chided as she leaned up above him. “I mean let’s be lazy and watch TV and have all our meals here and read the paper here and let’s not even get up to answer the phone.” Her eyes glittered in the pre-dawn light. “Our very own snow day. Just you and me.”

Dale shivered and smiled. He liked that idea very much.

“Can I get up to make coffee?” he asked, his voice a breathless hitch above a whisper.

“Sure!” she said, bouncing a little as she rose to her knees. “You make the coffee. I’ll get the bed nice and comfy.”

Dale shook his head. “Audrey, if I’m not going in to work today, I’m going back to sleep.”

“Oh,” she said, looking back at the pillows with a shrug. “I suppose that works too…”

He reached up and buried his hand in the hair at the back of her neck. “Unless you can think of something else we can do…?”

Audrey smirked, and Dale forgot, momentarily, that there was anything outside of these four walls for him.

* * *

He awoke again to the softly filtered light of a December midmorning and to the smell of coffee wafting in from the kitchen. For a brief moment, he wondered what day it was, what time it was, and why he wasn’t at work. Panicked, he rubbed his eyes.

“Audrey?”

“I’m in here!” she hollered from the hallway. “Stay there!”

The memories of their early morning planning session drifted back to him as he looked around the bed. Tangled sheets...pink panties…his own nakedness beneath the Egyptian cotton sheets. He scrubbed a hand one again over his face and leaned back into the pillows.

“I forgot what day it was,” he said, loud enough that he hoped she’d heard him.

She had, and as she returned through the open door carrying a food tray loaded with breakfast goodies, he saw she was smiling. “Was I  _ that  _ good? I made you forget what day of the week it was?”

He grinned at her; she was wearing his blue dress shirt, two buttons done up to close it unevenly over her breasts. The sleeves were too long and the shirt itself covered her down to her mid-calf. Dale felt stirrings in his lower belly. “Honey, I forget  _ who I am _ when you’re through with me.”

Audrey gently set the wooden tray down near the foot of the bed and Dale feasted his eyes upon the offerings. A pot of coffee, two cups, a few cubes of sugar and the porcelain creamer filled with milk for her (she still couldn’t drink it black) were the first thing he saw, but there were various  _ Viennoiseries _ that Audrey had picked up the day before at the bakery down the street—croissants, _ pain au chocolat _ , apple turnovers—arranged in a small basket as well. Next to that, a bowl of grapes and two squares of foil-wrapped chocolate, and a plate stacked with hot buttered toast.

As much as he liked his crispy-fried bacon and over-hard eggs, eating pastry in bed with Audrey Horne was about as good a breakfast decision as any.

Audrey climbed back under the covers and began arranging the pillows and blankets around herself in much the same ritualistic way that she readied for bed; Dale began pouring coffee but stopped to watch her, clocking her movements, the way she fluffed each pillow  _ just so _ and arranged it  _ just so  _ until she was cocooned and surrounded completely by pillows and blankets. Then she sighed, and Dale laughed.

“So this is why we need approximately forty-eight decorative throw pillows, hm?”

Audrey narrowed her eyes at him. “Hand me my coffee, young man.”

Dale couldn’t help but grin. He fixed her mug the way she liked it—one sugar, enough cream to change the colour of the coffee—and handed it to her.

“And a croissant.”

“Chocolate or butter?”

“You pick.”

He picked chocolate. Setting it in her open palm, he sat back and watched as she began tucking in.

“Aren’t you going to eat?” she asked around a mouthful of puff pastry.

With his eyes locked on hers, he reached over and stole a piece from the corner of her croissant. Her softly muffled cry of protestation turned into a pout, but Dale had already popped the morsel into his mouth. “Delicious,” he smiled at her.

Audrey lifted her coffee to her lips and drew her knees up to her chest. She smiled at him over the rim of her mug.

* * *

“So, wait, you mean it’s a different house every week?”

“Well, not every  _ week _ ,” Dale said. “They finish renovating one home a season, I think.”

Audrey propped her head up in her hand and the unbuttoned sleeve of his dress shirt fell open around her forearm. The noon sun slanted in across the floorboards and puddled near the end of the bed, reflecting off the varnished wood and catching the angles of Audrey’s face as she squinted at the television set on the dresser.

“You mean to tell me—”

“You really thought Bob Villa has been renovating the same house for the last decade?”

Audrey laughed, and Dale laughed, and the familiar theme song kicked in while the PBS announcer began introducing the next hour of television programming. Leaning back against her mountain of pillows, Audrey sighed. “Don’t change the channel, I want to watch Antiques Roadshow,” she snapped to once she saw Dale reaching for the remote.

“Why?”

She shrugged, suddenly self conscious. “I guess I just like the looks on their faces when they tell them their roll top secretary desk is from Georgian England and worth forty-thousand dollars.”

“Pounds.”

“Whatever.”

“And I doubt any secretary desk would be worth that much.”

Audrey absently picked at her thumbnail. “It would if King George actually used it.”

He leaned back against the pillows beside her. “I suppose that’s true, isn’t it.”

She turned to face him. “I wonder if anything we own will be worth money someday.”

Dale shook his head. “I highly doubt it,” he said. “Half this stuff came from IKEA…”

But Audrey was appraising the contents of their bedroom item by item. “I bet that armoire could fetch a pretty penny on the Antiques Roadshow,” she said, putting on an affected air. “This armoire was fabricated in Sweden in 1986. It’s made of particle board and melamine. But it was owned by the dashing Special Agent Dale Cooper of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, so in terms of value it’s hard to put a number on it…”

“Half a million, easy,” Dale smiled.

He watched her demeanour change as she shifted until she was perched on her knees, her hands splayed across her thighs. Lidded eyes met his as she leaned over and kissed him.

“Sold.”

“I don’t think that’s how Antiques Roadshow works.”

She deepened the kiss and leaned him back against the mattress, muttering against his mouth. “Now’s the time to lay back and say ‘Yes dear,’” she said as she slipped her hand beneath the waistband of his boxer shorts.

* * *

The last glow of sunset cast pale blue and burnt orange shades flitting across the walls as the world outside began to brighten with Christmas lights. Neither of them were hungry, having not exerted enough energy to justify large meals—although they had come close—so even though it was suppertime they were in no hurry to move. Laying on their sides, facing one another, they didn’t even change position to turn on the bedside lamps, preferring instead to let the sun go down and take the light with it.

They didn’t need to see each other anyway.

“Ask away,” she said.

Dale hmm’d. “Are you a person?”

“Yes.”

Dale lifted one finger to keep track. “Are you...a...woman?”

“No.”

Another finger. “Are you an historical figure?”

“No.”

_ Damn it _ , he thought. He was usually so good at 21 Questions. “Do I know him?”

Audrey grinned. “Yes.”

“Is it Gordon Cole?”

She wrinkled her nose. “Nope.”

“Albert Rosenfield?”

“Nope.”

“Harry Truman?”

Audrey shook her head. “Nuh-uh.”

Dale had lost track of how many fingers he ought to be holding up, but held up eight just to be safe. “I’m a man I know but I’m not a historical figure,” he muttered. “Do I see this person every day?”

Audrey giggled. “Yup.”

Dale lifted another finger and grinned. “Does this person have dark hair?”

Another giggle. “Yup.”

He scooted closer to her on the bed. “Does he like coffee?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Does he have a truly remarkable, brilliant, attractive girlfriend?”

Audrey rolled her eyes. “Guess again.”

Dale pressed his lips to hers. “You always pick me. Every single time.”

“And it always takes you forever to guess.”

He kissed her again. “Why not pick someone else? Someone important. Someone...admirable.”

Audrey’s face fell, cast into seriousness. “Dale,” she said, admonishment on her tongue. “Someone more important and admirable than you?”

Somehow he knew she meant it, too. But before he could say anything, the phone in the kitchen began to ring. It was the first call all day, and—temporarily forgetting their no-getting-out-of-bed rule, he leapt to his feet to answer it.

“Honey?” she asked after him.

Their pact came back to him, but the phone rang a second time, and Dale was torn. “Audrey, I really should—what if it’s work?”

She didn’t have a reply, but she smiled and nodded, and Dale dashed down the hallway to get the phone...

* * *

The idea came to him in the shower as he got ready to head in to work an hour later. His heart thudded in his chest as he combed his hair and ran his razor over his chin, then buttoned his top button and secured his tie around his neck.

His hand landed on his pocket more than once, out of nervous habit, just to make sure it was there.

He breathed in and out, slowly and deliberately, until his limbs stopped shaking and the feeling returned to her feet.

“Dale?”

“Hm.”

He turned back towards the bed where Audrey reclined, her housecoat drawn about her shoulders as she sat in the glow of the TV in the corner. He sat down next to her.

“Did you have a good day?” she asked.

He nodded. “The only thing that would make it better would be if I didn’t have to go into work,” he said. “But Albert needs me and I know he wouldn’t call if it wasn’t serious, so—”

Audrey lifted a finger and twirled it through an errant lock of Dale’s hair, tugging on it ever-so-gently. “Are you happy?”

Dale leaned back to focus on her face. “Am I happy?” he asked. “I’m incandescent.”

Audrey laughed and settled back into the pillow. “I don’t want anything to change between us.”

“Why would it?”

She vacillated, clucking her tongue in the process. “Everyone changes. Situations change…”

Dale, momentarily distracted by the Christmas lights going on across the street from their house, scooted closer to her on the bed and wrapped a protective hand around the curve of her hip. “But I’m looking forward to those changes, whatever they are. They’ll happen to us, together.”

Audrey nodded. “I know, but—”  

He kissed her on the tip of her nose. “I’ll try to be home before midnight.”

“Okay.”

He stood up and walked—one step, two steps, one step, two steps—until he reached the door. And there, on the threshold, leaving behind the woman he’d spent the whole day next to, he realized there was nothing scary about what he was about to do. He reached into his pocket and smiled.

“Hey Audrey?”

“Hm?”

Turning around, he caught her eye, made sure she saw him fully, even in the flickering light. “Catch,” he said, tossing what was in his hand to her on the bed.

She caught it with ease, her mouth popping around a small “Oh!” as the black velvet box landed in her hands. She stayed like that for a long moment before opening the box, and Dale swore he saw the diamond send sparkling light up into her eyes as she lifted the engagement ring out.

“Dale…?”

“If you’ll have me.”

She slipped the ring on her finger and nodded. “Any day of the week,” she said. “And a hundred times on snow days.”

_ Aces _ , Dale thought.

Audrey swung her legs out of bed and closed the gap between them; she pitched herself into his arms, kissing him so fully he thought his legs might stop working again.

“I guess that’s a yes,” he said when she broke away.

Arms around his neck, she hugged him fiercely. “You idiot,” she whispered.

Dale smiled. “Don’t wait up, okay?”

“Try to stop me.”

“Challenge accepted.”

“I love you,” she whispered.

He pressed his forehead to hers. “I love you too.”

**Author's Note:**

> With references to The Newsroom (when Will accuses Mac of not knowing how This Old House worked--which is, hilariously, also what I believed for the longest time!) and Dick Tracy (the ring at the end...)


End file.
